Searching My Roots

For Christmas 2016 my dear husband bought me Ancestry.com DNA test, so a few days after Christmas I spit in a plastic tube and sent my saliva to some lab somewhere and then I waited and waited and waited.

My moms parents were both born in Sicily and immigrated to the US in the 1920’s, my dad’s mom was from Canada and his dad was born in England, so I assumed I was half Italian, at least a quarter English and that other quarter would be a combination of Canadian, Irish and Scottish. Imagine my surprise when I reviewed the results and found out that I was only a quarter Italian, half English and a full quarter a combination of DNA from France, Scotland, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Serbia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Austria, Croatia, Bosnia, Romania, Turkey, Slovenia, Algeria, Tunisia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo and Greece. It was a very interesting exercise and I highly recommend using this service to analyze your DNA.

In the course of building out my family tree, I found many very interesting stories about my ancestors. The most fascinating began with my 15th great-grandfather Ralph, who was on the wrong side of the War of the Roses and at the age of 29, was beheaded for treason. He was a Knight and his wife, my 15th great-grandmother was a Baroness, thankfully his son, my 14th great grandfather Edward was born before his untimely demise. That’s just one of many stories I have uncovered, just on my father’s side.

When your DNA results come back you have an opportunity to connect with other members on Ancestry.com that match to a certain degree to your DNA. This by far has been the most interesting part of the journey. I have discovered at least one new relative and it’s been wonderful learning about this part of my family.

I have almost 200 matches with people as close as 1st cousin to distant 4th-6th cousins that match my DNA. Through some of these matches I’ve found some pretty fascinating stories about my ancestors.

What strikes me most about learning about my DNA matches is the fact the world is a very small place and that we’re all connected to one another. We may live in different places, or look different, or speak a different language, and there’s the Kevin Bacon six degrees of separation..